The other day my 5.5yo woke up with a dizzy head and I held him back from school. We spent the day at home and it was like the good old days with little guy – doing a bit of craft, playing lego, sitting in the garden, eating snacks in front of the TV.

But when lunch came along, I was completely torn.

Part of me believes that the only proper cure food is rice porridge with Bovril.

But the other part of me knows he won’t die if I give him a sandwich.

So what did I do?

HE ate a sandwich. While I had some rice porridge.

It’s been one of the few times that I’ve been stumped by my own cultural mish-mash.

Once again, the whole procedure of IUI Number 3 goes nice and smoothly.

And once again I “have a good feeling about this one”.

I guess the only thing that is different for me this time round, is that I am coming closer to the reality of “What Happens if IUI Doesn’t Work”.

Recently I have been doing a lot of reading on IVF. I’ve taken out books from the library, reading articles on the internet, forums, pamphlets and asking people.

I’ve read a book, So Close, written by a blog friend of mine, Tertia Albertyn, who chronicles her journey through 9 IVFs and a roller coaster ride of tragedies and a happy ending. It was such an eye opener for me into the real, everyday experiences of IVF. So I’m really glad I read it.

Basically, I don’t know what I’m going to do if IUI doesn’t work.

How long are we going to keep trying? Are we going to try IVF? How many times?

Now usually all the balloons deflate after a day or so, and they all end up in the bin.

But one hung around for a 9 days! We called her Daisy.

The air from our central heating blew her around the house. We’d find her strolling across the kitchen, or fleeing from the cobwebs, or stuck in a corner above the television, and some mornings she’d be trying to escape out the back door.

If I had to choose one word to describe my most significant childhood pastime, it would be CHICKENS. Not Barbie dolls, not television, not books.

I grew up on Christmas Island, where my parents had a large chicken coop at the bottom of our backyard. I don’t remember a time without chickens running around in our garden.

My sister and I loved playing with our baby chickens. We’d spending hours on the grass, watching them peck and scratch. We’d feed them, cuddle them, take them on adventures.

We watched them grow up, move out of their cardboard box and into the main chicken coop. They ate our food scraps and gave us eggs. They were happy chooks.

So when my son’s kindergarten finished learning about chickens and eggs, the teachers offered their chicks to anyone who wanted them. Free! To a good home! You should have seen me jump out of my seat and squeal ME ME ME!

I concocted a plan for us to raise them for 4 weeks, then pass them onto my mother, who now after migrating to Perth, still has a chicken coop in her backyard.

If you’ve never raised chicks, by 4 weeks, they need a bigger box, more outside time for running around, and they tend to bolt when they see people (which makes it difficult to catch them and put them back in their box at night).

So we now have 5 chicks. They run around our garden during the day. And live in a box in our laundry at night. So much fun.